Sometimes you simply have to believe in serendipity.
Last night , my genotyping project, the Geee! in Genome, a Metis named Elmer Ghostkeeper, and the movie The Last Mimzy would somehow come together. Years in journalism taught me to look for connections to help tell a story and this one just fell into my lap.

It started on Wednesday when I met Elmer Ghostkeeper at the opening of Geee! in Genome in Edmonton. Elmer is an interesting guy. He is a member of the Buffalo Lake Metis Settlement, an author , anthropologist, and that’s just the start of a long list. We came across each other by chance while going though the exhibit, and quite unexpectedly he asked me how I defined myself. Interesting question from an Anthropologist to someone who had only 24 hours previously sent off 3 DNA samples which would certainly yield a genetic definition of who I was. A definition that I have never had access to before.
Then last night, I watched The Last Mimzy. We had ordered it for no other reason than a trailer had looked interesting and Zip.ca had rated it well. Turned out that DNA figured prominently in the sci-fi / fantasy movie with the premise that over time our very innocence can become ‘junk DNA’. The Last Mimzy’ had been sent back to re-capture that lost DNA. One of the special bonus features was a segment on DNA which explained ( in 6 minutes!) how our genetic makeup has a lot to do with how we look, how we behave and may even show where we came from. There was an eclectic perspective from interviews with the movie’s producer Bob Shaye, Dr. Spencer Wells from the Genographic Project, and Dr. Erika Shugart with the National Academy of Science.
In the DNA featurette Dr. Wells suggested that indigenous people in particular are very good at telling you about their ancestry and have a sense of something that is passed down through generations. Without even knowing what it is, he said, they know their DNA.
Which brings me back to Elmer Ghostkeeper. As a Metis, he had pointed out, he has to produce a piece of paper – a genealogical tree – to prove who he is. I countered that this was a product of culture and politics and that I don’t have to do that and for me at least it doesn’t enter in to my identity. I seldom ever refer to myself as British-Canadian or Slovenian-Canadian. I was born and raised in Alberta and that is who I am. Elmer knew that at least part of who he was had crossed on a land bridge to get to North America and another part arrived here in a slightly more conventional manner from Europe.
Without knowing about my personal genotyping project Elmer had raised a key question. One raised in the Mimzy bonus feature and one that is raised for most people who have their own DNA tested by commercial services such as 23andMe, deCODE, or the DNA Ancestry Project.
How do we define ourselves?
Will I look at the ancestry clues and see myself differently ? Will strong odds of getting a disease leave me wanting to identify with people in the same situation? Or will I stick to what I was trying to tell Elmer Ghostkeeper? Like Popeye, “I am what I am and that’s all that I am”.
The kits have all arrived at their lab destinations so the process is underway to add another element to my identity, and we’ll soon see if there is a change in how I define myself.